LORDS SUPPER
The Lord’s Supper is a link between the Lord’s first coming and His second coming.
—Frederic Godet
One day when the Duke of Wellington was at the communion table, an old and extremely poor man took his place beside him. An usher was about to ask him to leave, but the duke, sensing what was going on, grasped the elderly gentleman’s hand and whispered, “Do not move, friend, we are all equal here.”
LOST – HOPELESSNESS
One time when Clyde Cook, president of Biola College, La Mirada, California, was in Taipei, he asked a man, “What do you think of Jesus Christ?”
The man responded, “Who is he?”
“You mean you have never heard of Jesus Christ?”
“No.”
Dr. Cook then led him to Christ. As the man shook Cook’s hand, he said repeatedly in Chinese, “Shi-shi, Shi-shi. Thank you for leading me to Christ.”
He was one of the two billion people who have never once heard the name of Christ.
On the side of a wholesale magazine truck was an advertisement of an article in a weekly magazine. The title of the article was “Joe Louis: A Sad Story.” How true of many people who have gained wealth and fame—after all this, their life is actually a sad story.
Lady Huntington was trying to lead a man to Christ. To her urgent entreaties he answered, “Oh! It is of no use! I am lost, I am lost.”
“Thank God for that!” she said.
“Why?” exclaimed the man in astonishment.
“Because,” said Lady Huntington, “Christ came to save the lost. He is just the One who can save you.”
To lose your wealth is much
To lose your health is more
To lose your soul is such a loss
As no man can restore.
When Mark Twain was in Berlin, he received an invitation asking him to call upon the Kaiser. “Why, Papa,” exclaimed his little daughter, after contemplating the missive for a moment in speechless awe, “if it keeps on this way, there won’t be anybody left for you to get acquainted with but God.”
One of life’s greatest tragedies is to be lost and not realize it. The next greatest is to be lost and know it, but not admit it or do anything about it.
No man ever got lost on a straight road.
—Abraham Lincoln
Life’s greatest tragedy is to lose God and not to miss Him.
—F. W. Norwood
The body of a forty-year-old woman was found on the hot sands of the Mojave Desert, fifteen miles northwest of Twenty-Nine Palms, California. As a journalist, she had gone to the desert from Los Angeles seeking material for a feature story. Search for her began when the owner of a desert cabin found a note written by her that said, “I am exhausted and must have water. I do not believe I can last much longer.” She had left three dollars to pay for a window she had broken to gain entrance into the cabin, but she found no water there. Apparently she collapsed en route back to her car, which was stuck in the sand two miles away. She died of thirst and exposure just two miles from Surprise Springs, where there was plenty of water.
One day David Garrick, a famous Shakespearean actor, was attracted to a gospel meeting. He was deeply moved to see tears freely coursing down the speaker’s face. Suddenly an old woman raised a withered finger at the preacher and said, “Sir, I have heard you plead five times today on various streets of this city and five times I have seen your tears. Why do you weep?” He replied that he couldn’t help but cry with concern over the fearful condition of the lost. The preacher was George Whitfield.
—Our Daily Bread
A writer polled several famous people asking them their selection for the saddest word in the English language. T. S. Eliot: “The saddest word in the English language is, of course, ‘saddest.’ ” Oscar Hammerstein II: “but.” John D. Pessor quoted Keats: “Forlorn! The very word is like a bell.” Karl Menninger, the psychiatrist: “Unloved.” Bernard M. Baruch: “Hopeless.” Balanchine, the choreographer: “The saddest word in any language is ‘vacuum.’ ” Truman quoted Whittier: “For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’ ” Tolstoy: “The saddest word in all languages, which has brought the world to its present condition is ‘atheism.’ ”
Combine all these and we have the picture of the soul out of Christ. He goes on his way to the vacuum of outer darkness, hopeless and forlorn, because having accepted the atheism which exalts himself to the place of God, he refuses to admit that he is loved by God, “but” goes to the saddest extremity of defiance against God.
A young man, twenty-two years of age, traveled to Chicago and registered at the Sherman Hotel. Taking a walk around the business district of the city, he became lost. He did not know the name, location, and appearance of the hotel so he was unable to find it again. So it was necessary to secure another room and he selected one in the Hotel Astor which was next door to the Sherman. Then, unwilling to acknowledge to the authorities that he was lost, for five days he tried to find the place where he had deposited his baggage. Unsuccessful in his attempts, he finally had to appeal to the police as his time was limited and his belongings valuable.
The police soon found his original registration and informed him that for five days he had been living right next door to the place where he had left his baggage. Although so near, he lost five days peace of mind, five days of time, and five days’ use of his baggage, all because he would not tell an officer that he was lost.
Your best resolution must wholly be waived,
Your highest ambitions be crossed;
You never need think that you’ll ever be saved,
Till first you have learned that you’re lost.
LOVE
Girl: “Do you love me?”
Boy: “Yes, Dear.”
Girl: “Would you die for me?”
Boy: “No … mine is an undying love.”
In describing the first-century Christians to the Roman emperor Hadrian, Aristides said, “They love one another. They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who will hurt them. If they have something, they give freely to the man who has nothing; if they see a stranger, they take him home and are happy, as though he were a real brother. They don’t consider themselves brothers and sisters in the usual sense, but brothers instead through the Spirit, in God.”
It’s not how much you do, but how much love you put into what you do that counts.
—Mother Teresa
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
—Johann von Goethe
Love cures people—both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.
—Karl Menninger
Peace is love resting.
Prayer is love keeping tryst.
Sympathy is love tenderly feeling.
Enthusiasm is love burning.
Hope is love expecting.
Patience is love waiting.
Faithfulness is love sticking fast.
Humility is love taking the true pledge.
Modesty is love keeping out of sight.
Soulwinning is love pleading.
Sanctification is love in action.
Love, it has been said, is a form of amnesia during which a woman forgets there are 1,222,978,173 other men in the world.
In vital areas, agreement; in doubtful areas, liberty; in all areas, love.
A Hindu manufacturer told Stanley Jones why he had come to one of his meetings. “Years ago when I was a boy we heckled a missionary preaching in the bazaar—threw tomatoes at him. He wiped off the tomato juice from his face and then after the meeting took us to the sweet shop and bought us sweets. I saw the love of Christ that day, and that’s why I’m here.”
A young man was condemned by a jury to die. He hated everyone, even his mother. His mother came before the judge and pleaded with him for her son. But the judge could do nothing. He said, “Why don’t you let him alone? There’s nothing you can do. He doesn’t love you.” “I know,” said the mother, “but I love him.”
At a men’s retreat a truck driver told about the change Christ had made in his life, and I asked him to think of some specific way in which he was different.
After a pause, he said, “Well, when I find somebody tailgating my truck, I no longer drive on the shoulder of the road to kick up cinders on him.” How simple but how profound is this understanding of what it means to love people in relevant and demonstrable ways.
—Bruce Larson
Love is an attitude—love is a prayer,
For a soul in sorrow, a heart in despair.
Love is good wishes for the gain of another,
Love suffers long with the fault of a brother.
Love gives water to a cup that’s run dry,
Love reaches low, as it can reach high.
Seeks not her own at expense of another,
Love reaches God when it reaches our brother.
It is said of Abraham Lincoln that he never forgot a kindness, but that he had no room in his mind for the memory of a wrong. There is a morality of memory, and love keeps a list of its creditors but none of its debtors.
—W. Graham Scroggie
Love may not make the world go around, but it sure makes the trip worthwhile.
I not only want to be loved, I want to be told that I’m loved.
—George Elliot
Perfect love is …
Slow to suspect—quick to trust
Slow to condemn—quick to justify
Slow to offend—quick to defend
Slow to expose—quick to shield
Slow to reprimand—quick to forbear
Slow to demand—quick to give
Slow to provoke—quick to conciliate
Slow to hinder—quick to help
Slow to resent—quick to forgive
You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.
Love is a feeling you feel when you have a feeling you’ve never felt before.
Joy is love’s music.
Peace is love’s agreement.
Longsuffering is love’s endurance.
Kindness is love’s service
Goodness is love’s deportment.
Faithfulness is love’s measure.
—John Haggai
The best gifts are always tied with heartstrings.
Love is like a smile—neither have any value unless given away.
Love cannot be wasted. It makes no difference where it is bestowed, it always brings in big returns.
Love doesn’t really make the world go around. It just makes people dizzy so it looks like it.
Love is giving all you can.
May I never, never outgrow my love for You.
—Bernard of Clairvaux
My true love brought me flowers tonight,
And I’m all smiles and song,
I guess I’m doing something right—
Or he’s done something wrong!
—Maureen Cannon
Christian love is …
Silence when your words would hurt,
Patience when your neighbor’s curt.
Deafness when the scandal flows,
Thoughtfulness for another’s woes.
Promptness when a stern duty calls,
Courage when misfortune falls.
A noted doctor has listed several emotions that produce disease in human beings—fear, frustration, rage, resentment, hatred, envy, and jealousy. He says the only antidote that can save people from being destroyed by these powerful forces is love.
A man was complaining to a missionary about missions in Africa. “How can you go to Africa and preach to them about love when there is so much injustice in your own country?” he demanded.
The mission leader’s answer was classic. “We don’t go in and preach to them about love. We go in and love them.”
A man who was a tyrant insisted that his wife arise early in the morning to prepare his breakfast. He was very demanding with regard to her care of the house, required a strict accounting of the money spent on groceries, clothes for the children, etc. Then he died. Later she married a man who was the opposite, loving, tender, considerate, unselfish. One day she was going through some of the effects of her first husband and found a list of all the things he had required her to do. Then to her amazement, she realized she was doing all those things for her present husband without being required to do them. She was doing them voluntarily because she loved him.
The work of the Menninger Clinic is organized around love. “From the top psychiatrist down to the electricians and caregivers, all contacts with patients must manifest love.” And it was “love unlimited.” The result was that hospitalization time was cut in half. There was a woman who for three years sat in her rocking chair and never said a word to anyone. The doctor called a nurse and said, “Mary, I’m giving you Mrs. Brown as your patient. All I’m asking you to do is to love her till she gets well.” The nurse tried it. She got a rocking chair of the same kind as Mrs. Brown’s, sat alongside her, and loved her morning, noon, and night. The third day the patient spoke and in a week she was out of her shell—and well.
A teenage girl, returning from an early date, found her mother still sitting up reading. “Mom,” she said, sprawling in a chair, “how do you tell if you’re really in love?”
Her mother smiled, walked over to the desk, pulled a weathered clipping out of the drawer, and handed it to her daughter. It read: “True love is like two deep rivers that meet and merge, intertwining completely into one, then flowing on together. The joys, happiness, and sorrows of each become the joys, happiness, and sorrows of the other. True love cannot be hurried, but once unselfishly rooted, it will grow forever.”
It’s wondrous what a hug can do.
A hug can cheer you when you’re blue.
A hug can say, “I love you so”
Or “I hate to see you go.”
A hug is “Welcome back again,”
And “great to see you! Where’ve you been?”
A hug can soothe a small child’s pain,
And bring a rainbow after rain.
A hug, there’s just no doubt about it—
We scarcely could survive without it!
A hug delights and warms and charms,
It must be why God gave us arms.
Hugs are great for fathers and mothers,
Sweet for sisters, swell for brothers.
And chances are your favorite aunts
Love them more than potted plants.
Kittens crave them, puppies love them,
Heads of states are not above them.
A hug can break the language barrier,
And make travel so much merrier.
No need to fret about your store of ‘em,
The more you give, the more there’s more of ‘em.
So stretch those arms without delay
And give someone a hug today!
In Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the central character, Raskolnikov, finally confessed his crime and was sent to Siberia. Sonya, the girl who loved him, followed voluntarily and found a job in a town nearest his work camp. At first, Raskolnikov was bitter about his exile and contemptuous of everyone, including Sonya. But the day came when her unflagging love and humble service melted his heart, and he loved her in return. Dostoyevsky writes, “They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite resources of life for the heart of the other. They had another seven years to wait, and what terrible suffering and infinite happiness before them! But he had risen again, and he knew it and felt it in his being, while she—she lived only in his life. Seven years, only seven years!”
One day a young man left home and denounced his father and mother. He wanted nothing to do with them. But years later he felt led to return home, so he wrote a letter to his mother asking forgiveness. “Mom, if you will let me come home, then hang a white handkerchief on the clothesline in the backyard.” The train passes near the rear of their house, and he said that, as he passed by, if the handkerchief were there, he would know she would let him come home.
But to his amazement, as he passed by in the train, there was not a white handkerchief on the line, but a number of white sheets hung out. How great was the love of that mother for her son. And how great is God’s love for the lost sinner.
In January 1981, Colombian rebels kidnapped Chet Bitterman, shot him, and left his body in a hijacked bus.
But in April 1982, as a demonstration of international good will, the churches and civic groups of Bitterman’s native area, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, gave an ambulance to the State of Meta in Colombia, where the young linguist was killed.
Bitterman’s parents traveled to Colombia for the presentation of the ambulance. At the ceremony his mother explained, “We are able to do this because God has taken the hatred from our hearts.”
When Alexander the Great became a world conqueror, he decided to have his portrait painted in oils. The finest artist in the realm was called to produce a masterpiece. When he arrived at Alexander’s court, the renowned general requested that the portrait be a full-face pose instead of a profile. This filled the artist with great distress, for one side of Alexander’s face was hideously disfigured by a long scar—the result of a battle wound. After studying his subject for some time, the painter came up with a happy solution. First he seated Alexander at a table; then, placing the General’s elbow on it, he asked him to cup his chin in his hand. As a final thoughtful gesture, the artist adjusted Alexander’s fingers so that they covered his unsightly scar. Then he went to work with paint and brushes and produced a flattering likeness of the General.
In much the same way, Christian love will overlook or seek to minimize the faults and shortcomings of others.
LOVING–KINDNESS